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Islamic Views on the Shape of the Earth: Difference between revisions
Islamic Views on the Shape of the Earth (view source)
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{{Quote|{{citation| last=Hoskin| first=Michael| last2=Gingerich| first2=Owen| chapter=Islamic Astronomy| title=The Cambridge Concise History of Astronomy| ISBN=9780521576000| url=https://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/physics/history-philosophy-and-foundations-physics/cambridge-concise-history-astronomy?format=PB&isbn=9780521576000| pages=50-52| year=1999| publisher=Cambridge University press| location: Cambridge| archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20201226174539/https://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/physics/history-philosophy-and-foundations-physics/cambridge-concise-history-astronomy?format=PB&isbn=9780521576000}}|In 762 [Muhammad’s] successors in the Middle East founded a new capital, Baghdad, by the river Tigris at the point of nearest approach of the Euphrates, and within reach of the Christian physicians of Jundishapur. Members of the Baghdad court called on them for advice, and these encounters opened the eyes of prominent Muslims to the existence of a legacy of intellectual treasures from Antiquity - most of which were preserved in manuscripts lying in distant libraries and written in a foreign tongue. Harun al-Rashid (caliph from 786) and his successors sent agents to the Byzantine empire to buy Greek manuscripts, and early in the ninth century a translation centre, the House of Wisdom, was established in Baghdad by the Caliph al-Ma’mun. […] Long before translations began, a rich tradition of folk astronomy already existed in the Arabian peninsula. This merged with the view of the heavens in Islamic commentaries and treatises, to create a simple cosmology based on the actual appearances of the sky and unsupported by any underlying theory.}} | {{Quote|{{citation| last=Hoskin| first=Michael| last2=Gingerich| first2=Owen| chapter=Islamic Astronomy| title=The Cambridge Concise History of Astronomy| ISBN=9780521576000| url=https://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/physics/history-philosophy-and-foundations-physics/cambridge-concise-history-astronomy?format=PB&isbn=9780521576000| pages=50-52| year=1999| publisher=Cambridge University press| location: Cambridge| archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20201226174539/https://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/physics/history-philosophy-and-foundations-physics/cambridge-concise-history-astronomy?format=PB&isbn=9780521576000}}|In 762 [Muhammad’s] successors in the Middle East founded a new capital, Baghdad, by the river Tigris at the point of nearest approach of the Euphrates, and within reach of the Christian physicians of Jundishapur. Members of the Baghdad court called on them for advice, and these encounters opened the eyes of prominent Muslims to the existence of a legacy of intellectual treasures from Antiquity - most of which were preserved in manuscripts lying in distant libraries and written in a foreign tongue. Harun al-Rashid (caliph from 786) and his successors sent agents to the Byzantine empire to buy Greek manuscripts, and early in the ninth century a translation centre, the House of Wisdom, was established in Baghdad by the Caliph al-Ma’mun. […] Long before translations began, a rich tradition of folk astronomy already existed in the Arabian peninsula. This merged with the view of the heavens in Islamic commentaries and treatises, to create a simple cosmology based on the actual appearances of the sky and unsupported by any underlying theory.}} | ||
Mohammad Ali Tabatabaʾi and Saida Mirsadri of Tehran University note in their paper surveying Qur'anic cosmography that the Qur'an "takes for granted" the flatness of the earth, a common motif among the scientifically naive people at that time, while it has "not even one hint of a spherical earth"<ref>{{citation |last1=Tabatabaʾi |first1=Mohammad A. |last2=Mirsadri |first2=Saida |date=2016 |title=The Qurʾānic Cosmology, as an Identity in Itself |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/24811784 |journal=Arabica |volume=63 |issue=3/4 |pages=201-234}} p. 211; also available on [https://www.academia.edu/23427168/The_Quranic_Cosmology_as_an_Identity_in_Itself academia.edu]</ref> They also note that the pre-Islamic poet Umayya ibn Abī al‐Ṣalt (d. 5 / 626) described the earth as a carpet and likened it to the uplifted heavens. | |||
{{Quote|Dīwān, Umayya ibn Abī al‐Ṣalt, p. 179 cited in {{citation |last1=Tabatabaʾi |first1=Mohammad A. |last2=Mirsadri |first2=Saida |date=2016 |title=The Qurʾānic Cosmology, as an Identity in Itself |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/24811784 |journal=Arabica |volume=63 |issue=3/4 |pages=201-234}} p. 226|And [he] shaped the earth as a carpet then he ordained it, [the area] under the firmament [are] just like those he uplifted}} | |||
Damien Janos in another paper on Qur'anic cosmography has similarly noted that while the exact shape of its boundaries are not described, "what is clear is that the Qurʾān and the early Muslim tradition do not uphold the conception of a spherical earth and a spherical universe. This was a view that later prevailed in the learned circles of Muslim society as a result of the infiltration of Ptolemaic astronomy".<ref>{{citation |last1=Janos |first1=Damien |date=2012 |title=Qurʾānic cosmography in its historical perspective: some notes on the formation of a religious wordview |journal=Religion |volume=42 |issue=2 |pages=215-231}} See pp. 217-218</ref> | |||
==Direct references to a flat Earth in the Qur'an== | ==Direct references to a flat Earth in the Qur'an== | ||